"If you thought 2017 was crazy..."

Paul Waldman's assessment of Trump as a third-class intellect, but a fourth-class temperament harkens back to the erroneous attribution of "a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament" as Oliver Wendell Holmes' assessment of FDR. Of Trump, Waldman snarks that "He's the stablest, most geniusy stable genius, believe me," before opining on "the fact that the president of the United States is an obvious halfwit:"

We don't need to argue about whether it's true, because we see it every day.

Not only was he the most uninformed candidate in memory, he had no evident interest in learning about any substantive issue--yet proclaimed himself to know more about everything than anyone.

Contrast Trump's brainless braggadocio with a hypothetical opposite--such as his predecessor:

So if you were building a politician's mind from scratch you'd want him to have the intellect to understand complex policy issues but the judgment to make good decisions with limited information; the social intelligence to connect with a variety of different kinds of people; the wisdom to grasp potential futures from an understanding of the past; and the verbal dexterity necessary to speak eloquently off the cuff, to name just a few of the ways he might be considered smart. Few presidents have them all, yet our current president seems to have none of them.

Waldman then issues this frightening prophecy:

As a 71-year-old man who never exercises and subsists largely on junk food, the potential for Trump to experience a cognitive decline in the next few years is real. If you thought 2017 was crazy, just wait for 2018, 2019, and 2020.